I've wanted this for a while, stupidly, honesty mainly for the fun of it and the Wario game on the system.

I got myself a JPN Virtual Boy.

The stand is good, has all the bits, the mesh face mask is in good condition and all is well. The only thing missing is the paperwork from the box - which does irk me a tad I must admit but I'm still very happy.

Grabbed a few games for it as well but there's not much out there unfortunately, well at least today and I'll be confined to ordering from the internet for Wario but that's cool, I must get that game I've heard an awful lot about it and how good it is so I'm well keen.

Welcome to the Virtual Boy club!

At least now you can say you own every shmup on the system! Don't forget to pick up an AC adapter too, as it's a very worthwhile investment.

Wow, nice catch, Suits! A friend and ex co-worker of mine had one and the complete library, sans the Wario Land game. He was very proud of it, but suddenly sold everything off to another colleague as he needed the dosh.

Nice! Managed to play one in Super Potato a while back and thought it was neat as hell. Granted I only played it for 2 minutes, but i really enoyed it. I see them every so often for sale and the price isn’t actually too bad, but I don’t think I can justify the price and space it would take up for the limited time I’d play it. Certainly a conversation piece though!

My retro collection has remained surprisingly stagnant over the course of the last few years. I tend to assume I have most of what I'd be interested in already and my bargain hunting fire has started to fade ever so slightly as a result.

Anyway, I just bought Haunting Ground and Chaos Legion (both on PS2) after some very positive word-of-mouth. Curious to dive in when I have the chance.

Just got the shipping email for my Analogue Mega Sg, so that might even be here as early as Monday.

Be nice to finally be able to retire my increasingly flaky Megadrive before it dies entirely.

Well I am bloody jealous. I was flip flopping on whether to get one for ages, and eventually fell down on the side of not, although the situation is fluid and could change at any moment! It just looks so nice...

They put this video to show all the options etc... (and also demo the built in game a bit)

There’s an option there that attempts to detect developers using checkerboard pixel patterns to create semi transparency or colour blending on crt and replicate the result by blurring just those areas. If that works consistently it could be really cool.

Auto region detection for the small number of carts that actually had region locking is a nice thing too (Thundeforce IV for example)

So, I should be playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice but may attention was draw to something else this afternoon on my way back from the shops.

A local lad was selling off his Mega Drive collection and had this, he wanted £40 which I thought was very very fair so jumped on it.

It is missing the manual though, which, if it had it would be going for a lot closer to £100 and up.

It's clean, suspiciously clean.

I gave it the quick once over in his doorway and all seemed good enough for me to hand the cash over to him but without a cartridge tool on me, I was risking it.

I got it home and opened it up - all seems sweet.

Apart from me nearly butchering the cart bolt threads putting it back together , it's all in very nice condition.

My region modded Mega Drive will only play this in its region marked format sadly (PAL) - this may well be one of the few latter Mega Drive carts that only had its regions ROM on the board.

The boarders can I do something about but the speed will be affected - if its not one that was optimised for European realise (think SoR2).

Once I'd down some jiggery pokery with my PVM it was booting up nicely.

It plays pretty well.

I've not played Super Castlevania for a few years but this seems to feel just as nice, if maybe a little snappier. Although I have been playing a the GameBoy Castlevania's lately so that may be clouding my memory a bit.

The sound is rad, it has those bassy tones associated with the Yamaha Mega Drive chip - think Alien3 levels of filth.

I've only put an hour into to so far, just to see if it would boot really, then set up the geo, then ended up playing it for a while.

Ooh, jealous. Been trying to find a copy of that that I’m actually willing to pay what they’re asking for a while now.

On some of my region locked carts I can flip the switch on my modded md back to US after booting and it’s fine, but Konami’s stuff seems to periodically recheck it. I have a copy of turtles tournament fighters that locks up after a few minutes if you flip it back to US after booting.

I’ll be interested in seeing if the analogue Sg will keep it running as US but tell the cart it’s running on the thing it asks for. I’ll let you know.